From Flying to Fiery Lizards
by Kat Ducat
Summary: At George and Angelina's wedding a connection blossoms between the best man and maid of honour. Now that Charlie and Katie have been together for a few weeks, they start thinking about their relationship more seriously. Includes Quidditch, a rather dubious dragon and blatant public displays of affection.


_A/N: This story is dedicated to HedwigBlack for introducing me to the pairing that is Charlie/Katie. It was also written for her Charlie/Katie challenge and for the Family Boot Camp. _

_Enjoy!_

)O(

"Oi, Katie, to your left!" George shouted, giving Katie just enough time to turn and catch the apple he was throwing before it hit her in the face. She grinned, gave George a mock salute and flew away from him, down to the other end of the field. She was heading for a crude makeshift goalpost that had been erected there five hours before. In front of it wavered Ron, with a constipated yet determined look on his face. Scoring was going to be a pushover.

Katie was soaring steadily, focused on her task, when a figure swooped out from under her, causing her to break right and lose her focus.

"Charlie! Of all the-," she swore and gave him a short but intense glare. That smooth bastard was too good a Quidditch player not to be a professional. Oh well, she was just going to have to show him that two could play at that game of ambush, later. Katie turned again and went on flying to the goalpost, but not before she caught a wink from Charlie. She sighed and smiled widely as soon as her back was turned. God, she loved him. He aggravated her in so many ways: at Quidditch, teasing her that he had more scars, that he could tame a dragon, that he had better abs... but that was all just for fun, really. He knew she enjoyed criticising and arguing with him, so he made sure that they had silly things to fight over. In fact, their 'fights' were never longer than a few minutes and always ended in kissing.

On the other side of the field, Charlie wondered over how he had managed to get a marvellous girl like Katie. She could be a hell of a lot better than he at Quidditch, when she wanted to, and she had always had the advantage of being good at getting along with people. All he had were his dragons and his family, other than that the only person he chatted with on a regular basis was her, and even she, however slowly, was becoming part of the Weasley clan. The only really special thing in his life was starting to be common to him. He had a nagging feeling that he should have more excitement in his life.

After George and Angelina's wedding where Katie had been the maid of honour and he the best man, the family had gotten to know her a lot better.

That night, George had whispered in his ear that she was about to be recruited for the Holyhead Harpies.

That night, he had seen her scars and the way they hurt her which she had tried, unsuccessfully, to hide.

That night, Katie had learned that a scarf around the neck does not go well with a low-cut satin dress.

That night, Charlie had fallen in love with her boldness, especially when she was the one to catch Angelina's bouquet.

That night, they made an instant connection, walking and talking in the garden when the crowd inside got too rowdy.

Now she came over practically every week at the insistence of Mrs Weasley, who wanted to get to know her better so that, "I will actually know what my daughter-in-law is like before she becomes one," in her words. Charlie had told her she was over-reacting, but his mum had smiled knowingly and replied with, "that's what they all say."

Now, Charlie's mind was a little more open to the possibility, however remote, that Katie might want to, you know, take him up on that offer of lifelong partnership. She certainly wasn't about to deny it. After weeks of spending their nights together as a couple, there was no sign of their relationship deteriorating or of her cooling off. In fact, that way she had swerved around him just now had been particularly sexy, almost like she wanted it to be that way…

)O(

While Charlie hovered in this dreamlike state, Katie was hard at work. She had gotten to the end of the pitch and was eyeing up the best way to get past Ron who was starting to look intimidating despite his facial expression. Yes, it was silly, but before they started playing they had decided that the losing team would buy the others dessert when they went to Diagon Alley the next day. Florian Fortescue's Ice-Cream parlour was up and running again and the ice cream tasted better than ever. Katie could already taste the sweet flavour that called itself victory; if they managed to score now, the game would be over. Maybe it was just that she felt Charlie looking at her and wanted to beat him, but Katie followed a sudden instinct and dived. She flew right past Ron, who spun on the spot, and deposited the apple directly in the hoop. The other two members of her team, Bill and George, let out a cheer and soared over to pat her on the back. They had a little trouble as they were still using the old Cleansweeps, but they managed a few high-fives before they completely lost balance. The game was over, they had won!

It was getting late so everyone elected to troop back home and call it a night. Everyone except Charlie, of course. He caught up with Katie just as she was about to put her broom away and whispered, "before you go, come with me, I want to show you something."

Katie suspected that this might be a pretext to get her alone away from his family's prying eyes, so she cheerfully agreed. The day with the Weasley family had been hectic: she had had to talk to some relative or other whenever the last one let her go. Talking to people was alright, she just much preferred to spend her time in comfortable silence, something the Burrow blatantly lacked.

"So, what is this very interesting thing you want to show me?" she asked.

"Don't make me tell you, you know I'm bad with words and I couldn't describe it well anyway."

"What's it for then? Why'd you have to wait so long to show me?" she was going along with his story of 'showing her something', but getting slightly intrigued. When he failed to answer, Katie laced the fingers of her hand with his and leaned against him as they walked. Charlie was so dependable.

They walked like this for about three minutes, but it was getting dark quickly. Katie glanced at Charlie. "Why couldn't we just fly wherever you want us to go on our brooms?" she asked, "you could have told me to take mine with me."

"I love this place too much to disturb it with flying. Anyway, haven't you noticed that there have been lots of muggles in this area lately, creeping around in the dark? I think I saw something in the British muggle paper that they had found a new species of bird. They must be getting excited."

"I don't see what they'd want with a bird."

"They're muggles, Katie. They still think wristwatches are a pretty neat idea."

They came to a small clearing, sheltered by the trees. "Come over here," Charlie said excitedly and beckoned Katie over to a rock a little way away from the ring of trees. She knelt down and looked at the rock. It looked like an ordinary rock. She vaguely wondered whether he had gotten her here so they could have some kind of kinky forest sex. Probably not, judging from the innocent look on his face, but you never knew.

When he was sure he had her full attention, Charlie lifted up the rock and carefully put his other hand under it. He fished around for a few and seconds, then pulled it out, triumphant. In it, there nestled something that looked like a very small orange dragon.

"Look what I found yesterday. Isn't she a beauty?"

"Charlie, I know you've had lots of experience with this kind of stuff, but are you sure this dragon is safe if you only found out about yesterday?"

"Oh, it's not a dragon," he laughed, "for one thing it's much too small. This is as big as they get. I call it a fire lizard. You can stroke it if you want. I don't think it bites."

Katie was used to Charlie occasionally rambling on about dragons, but she'd never seen one so she felt pretty uncomfortable around them, even if he said the thing wasn't really a dragon. The point was, it looked like one. Not wanting to upset him, she held out her hand and touched the reptile. It didn't move and she breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn't that bad really. Actually, the rough texture of the skin was quite pleasant to the touch. She found herself holding out her whole hand and petting it as if it was a cat.

"It's gorgeous," she said, "very, ah, rough."

"I knew you'd like it."

"Hey Charlie," she took her hand away and looked him in the eye, "why did you take me here, really? There's got to be more to it than this little lizard."

Charlie blushed. The fact was that his thoughts earlier had led to other thoughts, and, like a certain character of Jane Austen, he had found himself considering certain possibilities. He coughed and put the lizard back on the rock. This was the moment of truth.

"I was wondering if maybe, maybe," he looked at her, "if maybe you'd want to marry me someday."

After some moments of silence from Katie, he flushed and looked down. Stupid, stupid, stupid! Of course she wouldn't want to marry him; he lived with dragons in Romania. You'd be mad to want to marry someone like that.

"I don't know if I can answer that," Katie said, not looking at him. She liked Charlie, a lot, but they'd only know each other for a few weeks. It seemed too good to be true.

"When someone asks you a question like that they're usually expecting an answer."

"I uh, I'll think about it."

Charlie moved away from her, feeling the keen sting of rejection, how could he be so stupid! He chided himself.

Katie looked after him, her eyes pleading for him to come back. She wanted to regain that air of comfort they'd had before. She wanted to be with him, but she didn't' know how to not say yes without scaring him off.

"I'm not saying no. I mean, George and Angelina just got married; people might think it's a bit sudden. And anyway, we both have commitments. We'd be hard put to be able to work out some sort of stable living arrangements, not to mention raising a family. I'll tell you what," she grabbed his hand and forced him to sit down next to her again, "ask me again in six months. I think we'll be able to work out something better then. I notice you didn't go down on one knee," she teased, "and there's no ring on my finger. Ask me again when you have a ring to put on my plain little finger."

Charlie sensed that all was not lost. He grinned back at her and kissed the finger she was pointing at him, and then continued kissing her arm until he got to her neck. Once there, the two of them began to really get into the spirit of things. They kissed as if they were going to die tomorrow, veritably eating each other up. Slowly, Katie took off her shirt and smiled at Charlie to encourage him to do the same.

Now fully naked, they engaged in killing the time they had until morning with some very pleasurable activities, disturbing the local wildlife and birdwatchers to the point that they all gave up and went somewhere else, leaving Charlie and Katie alone.

After a few hours when they were lying, sleepless, on the grass staring up at the stars, Katie giggled.

"Think of what that lizard must have been thinking when he saw us."

"We probably scarred him for life."

"He'll still have fewer scars than we do."

Charlie put his arm around Katie and kissed her on the neck, the one place on her body where her skin was not tanned but unusually white.

"He doesn't have the love we do that lets us forget about those scars," Charlie whispered back.

They slept easily after that, ensconced in each other's' arms.

)O(

_Fin_

_Now that you've read it, what do you think?_


End file.
